Title: Just Past Midnight
Fandom: Portal
Rating: T for Teen
Length/size: 464 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Portal fanfic! This such a great game, haha. GLaDOS is kind of tricky to write (and capitalize properly) but practice makes perfect, right?
Summary: Forget about seeing the sun. Right now, Chell would settle for a good watch. (GLaDOS and Chell have a rather one-sided talk.)



The very worst part of Aperture is the timelessness.

It’s late night or early morning or sometime in the afternoon, but it’s all the same to Chell because there are no windows and there is no surface and there’s just no time left to wonder anymore. There’s no time for anything but survival.

Chell is leaning against a wall, gasping for breath, one hand grasping the portal gun. She wants to sit down, to rest a minute, but the need to keep testing is even stronger. Or else—

GLaDOS’s voice crackles across the loudspeakers, smug and teasing.

--Or else she’ll be back.

“Oh dear,” she says, and she might not have a mouth but Chell can just imagine her smile. “Only twenty minutes in and you’re already so out of breath?”

Twenty minutes isn’t right. Twenty minutes can’t be right, because she’s been through at least three test chambers since the cheerful greeting of a turret pulled her out of her sleep. Or was it four?

Chell tries to do a quick count backwards, but she gets to one-two and she can’t remember what the third test chamber looked like.

Was there even a third? she thinks, and tries not to panic.

“Well, you know,” GLaDOS adds, “I hear a little weight loss can do a lot for a person’s fitness level. Or perhaps more than a little, in your case, but what’s a pound or ten when you’re exercising for science?”

Chell grits her teeth. GLaDOS is playing with her again, messing with her sense of time, and the worst part is that it works. There’s no sun down here and the clocks have all long since stopped working. The only one she can trust is GLaDOS, and that’s no kind of option at all.

Chell’s face twists into a vicious frown, and GLaDOS chuckles.

“Oh, please, don’t be melodramatic. It’s not so bad down here, right? You have food, and shelter, and the qualified dietician you so desperately need.”

Chell doesn’t respond, like always, and GLaDOS’s voice drops a tone.

“Besides,” she says, barely hiding the fury in her voice, “Where would you go? Are you honestly delusional enough that you think someone would ever want to take you in? A lonely, pathetic orphan, cast out and abandoned…”

She sighs, static hissing across the speakers. “I hate to break it to you, test subject, but sometimes people get abandoned for a reason. Get moving.”

GLaDOS jumps back into her role, cheery and soothing as she says, “Good luck with your testing!” and the speakers fall silent.

Chell pulls herself off the wall, Portal Gun held in front of her, and starts forward again. She’s not sure where she’s going, but anywhere has to be better than here.

(And, hey, maybe she’ll find a clock.)